Paris + Barcelona Trip 2019 Part 1

Nate & I took off on a week long vacation to Paris & Barcelona.  I originally let Nate pick, since I picked Greece for our last vacation.  He was super intrigued in reading about Barcelona, so he picked that and then we found a Groupon for Barcelona AND Paris and thought that sounded like a perfect pair.  However, we went to go buy it and the Groupon had expired...so I just did my own little planning, and voila...we bought tickets about 2 weeks before take off!

Before I recap our trip... I CAN'T say how very thankful I am for Nate's parents offering to take on all 3 boys while we were gone.  Having someone watch 4, 3, & 1 year old boys is NOT an easy task...but they did it happily and my boys had so much fun, I'm not sure they cared that we were gone! HAHA.  I can never repay but please know just how much it meant for us to get away to celebrate 10 years of marriage (in September!). 

We took LOTS of pictures and covered LOTS of ground, so I'm going to break it down into 2 parts...

Part 1- Paris

We flew an overnight flight from Chicago straight to Paris and when we arrived it was 10:30am Paris time.  Because we are horrible at sleeping on a plane... we barely slept, so our goal was to keep moving to fight the jet lag and stay on Paris's time.

We checked into our hotel and let me tell you...this hotel was bomb. There was nothing over the top about it (it had a huge fancy breakfast area that we never ate at), but it was in the BEST location and had an incredible view of the Eiffel Tower.  Their front desk people were kind and we had no language barrier issues, and we never felt unsafe.  It was a small room, but honestly we didn't need much room.  All we did was sleep from about midnight to 9am there every night.  The location was perfect and the view outstanding. In case you're wondering... I found it on google.  I'm 2/2 on good hotels via google.  Reviews are EVERYTHING.

Anyways.

After we checked in, first up on our itinerary was The Louvre.  Since we got in 1/2 way through the day, we didn't want to do a bus tour and miss 1/2 our day, but we also didn't want to waste it not knowing where we were going.  So we ate lunch...at some random little restaurant...and it was wonderful. We didn't have a single "bad" meal there.  French food is sooooo good!

Then we headed to The Louvre.  We bought tickets for the 3:00 slot, got there around 2:45...and the line to stand in for the "3:00 slot" was 1/2 way around the pyramid.  I kid you not. So DEFINITELY buy tickets beforehand.  The line was long but moved super quick and we were inside in 20 minutes.

The Louvre is huge, everyone will tell you that, but it's like REALLY huge.  Like you  just can't imagine how big.  We picked  few things we definitely wanted to see, and made sure to see those things. We seriously got lost and had a hard time finding our way out of the museum...it's just that big.  Obviously, we saw the Mona Lisa.  It was small, yes. The room was packed, yes.  It was claustrophobic, yes.  We got to the front, looked at it for 30 seconds, and then were told to "move on" so everyone else could have their time.  It's insane. But really cool .

After the Louvre, we wandered around with really no "plan" except to head in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower.  The Louvre was about a 40 min walk from our hotel and on the way we saw SO MUCH of Paris.  It's crazy how many "landmarks/historical monuments" are all just right there.  We walked everywhere in Paris.  We never took the metro (although I hear it's fantastic), or an uber (except to/from airport) and seriously just walked and took in the city.  There's no better way to see it all.

We ate a late dinner...because it's what Parisians do (get there at 6pm and they just hand you a drink menu because no one eats until about 9).

And then got back to our hotel around 11 and we just crashed.  We were exhausted.

The next day we woke up, ate croissants :) and we had our hop on hop off bus tour.  It felt super touristy to do, but it honestly was so nice.  The weather was beautiful so we always sat up top, you have a great view and could get to lots of places that we wanted to see.  It's nice to do at the beginning of your trip because then you have a good idea of what is where...and then the other days we were able to walk around and go wherever we wanted, re-visit places that we loved, etc.  It's a super walk-able city, but it was nice to kinda know what all was where, and the bus tour helped that.

That day and the rest were just filled with all things Paris.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower.

Arc de Triomph (at one end of Champs Elysees)

Trocadero Place

Sacre-Coeur

We locked in our love at the Pont des Arts (love lock bridge)

We took an hour long evening cruise on the River Seine and it was so pretty.  We didn't get many pictures, but just took it in!

I did all this research before we went and almost everyone recommended the same thing...just WALK the city.  All over.  You'll see so much, eat all the food, and enjoy the romantic Paris vibe.  We did just that and it's so true- walking is the best way to experience it.

We went to Versailles one day too...

The famous hall of mirrors in Versailles

and the most magical garden.

It was so, so beautiful.  We bought a bus ticket (35 min drive from Paris) and did a half day there...and it was perfect.  We had plenty of time to see enough of the palace and then we ventured out to the enormous and beautiful gardens.  It's insane how big it is...and it's just so charming.

When we got back from our day in Versailles, we grabbed sandwiches and then sat in Champ de Mars park and just watched the sunset over the Eiffel Tower and then watched it do it's sparkly thing at night 😍.

 It was my favorite time of our entire trip. 
We sat there eating, drinking wine, and we just talked through some of Amanda's 100 questions ( @mandacarpenter ).  It honestly pushed us to answer some questions that maybe we hadn't talked about or ones that we hadn't revisited...and it was such a fun way to have an intentional conversation while having all of that solo time-- it's easy to sink into the "kids + life" talk, but this encouraged us to just talk about US, dreams, hopes, etc. Watching the sunset and being in the park with tons of other people from all over the world, it was one of the best nights of my life.

Paris...dreams do come true :)

Next up... Barcelona!

xox,

Naomi